I'm one of those few people who get a lot of enjoyment out of Life is Feudal.

It is definitely a game that either requires you to be on a server set with fast experience or willing to wade through the immense grind, performance could also be better but it's playable (more-so than ARK) and gets a lot of attention from the dev team with big updates.
LiF:YO isn't the easiest game to pick-up, it really pushes that open survival theme hard with practically no instruction and an steep learning curve to figure out how to get far.

With this game, I'd say that you need to be on your own server with a fair sized group of friends... all that are heavily into roleplay, that's where this title shines.
If you dive into a random server and try to make that your home, you'll quickly get frustrated when a random person slaughters you for no reason and wrecks all of your hard work.

On the subject of a bigger server being more appropriate, it's worth keeping in mind that Life is Feudal is also going to have an MMO version (which sadly will more than likely require a second purchase)... though they'll definitely need to make some massive improvements to the performance and interface before opening that can of worms with the planned Beta next year.

I was gifted LiF from a friend about a month ago, and I wasnt convinced by what i'd seen early on in its life. We had a couple of issues early on, no spotted wildlife on the island in 3 attempts at self-hosting. Ended up renting a server for about £4/mo for 8 slots (i think, 2 would have done us).

At this point we'd already put about 12hrs in 2-3 days just on starting. That doesnt actually sound much, but the problem is the depth and complexity of things, its not 3-4hrs of fun and laughter, its a slog... the whole game kinda is. The first hour see's you meeting up, getting sticks, grass fibres and flint to make basic tools. Once you've chopped down trees, done some terraforming (which, IMO, is the best version ive seen in any game - its small increments mean the influences look much more natural, rather than taking chunks) and tried to do a bit of mining (!!), if you wanted to do some combat with basic weapons (not tools) then theres an insane set of things that need to be done to get there.

Theres just so many skills to learn that in 61hrs of playing it with a friend, i think i made a bow but not a sword (maybe i did, but i'd built a bow way way before i'd built other stuff and couldnt use them because my combat skills werent high enough! you had to build a test dummy/target to practice, and that genuinely took about 10hrs more), built a smallish house, a blacksmith and a few basic tools (ie multiple items to make leather, rope, straw) and only just got to the point where i could use the bow. Everything required having access to other tools, which needed skills in other areas, and its all extremely time consuming unless you have it on a somewhat pointless XP gain setting. It just isnt a game for playing in a small group or solo. What all this does mean is that i'd imagine you can get a decent game when playing with others. Trading expertises, rather than doing everything yourself.

We stopped playing after about a week, i'd still carry on as i kinda enjoyed it, but its so much work its not something you'll feel like you've achieved anything in an hour or 2. Its a decent time sink though.

@suenstar
I believe the MMO is included, but its just 1 character slot, which is probably fine for plenty of people, and i suspect anyone who wants multiple characters is now used to paying for them on something like this.